Captain's Corner: Cooler weather picks up fishing during day

With the water temperature dropping a few degrees and fall starting to kick in, fishing is starting to pick up during the day. Snook, redfish, trout and others are roaming the flats and bay area reefs. Reefs and wrecks are holding sheepshead, mango snapper and some keeper grouper. When bottom fishing these spots, I like fishing the slower tide so I can use the smallest weight possible to get down to the bottom and start adding as the tide picks up. I also put out a flat line for mackerel and sharks. As you start moving up to the flats, you find a lot of fry bait to nice sardines, which means the fish are moving up on the flats to feed. In the fall I like the outgoing tide to about half way up the incoming tide. It doesn't matter if you're live baiting, cut baiting or throwing artificials, and it doesn't matter if you fish the flats or bottom fish the bay, the next few months should be some great fishing in our area.

Jim Lemke charters out of Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater and can be reached at (813) 917-4989 and at [email protected]

Spring is trying to move in, with just a few cold fronts mixed in. The up-and-down air temperatures will slightly affect the water temperature and also affect the fishing. Fishing has been mostly incredible in North Pinellas. All of the species we ex...

The cold front that ended Wednesday drove the offshore bottom temperatures back down into the low 60s. On dives Friday, my dive computer read 62 degrees at the bottom in 54 feet of water. On the next dive it read 60 in 62 feet. We were looking for ho...

Surface water temperatures have dipped into the low 60s, but the fish donít seem to mind. The longer days get the temperature up and helps keep it from getting into the danger zone at night. Snook have been the hot bite this past week and, believe it...

Published: 03/16/18

Updated: 03/17/18

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Terry Tomalin, the Tampa Bay Times' larger-than-life outdoors editor, traveled Florida and the world to take readers on extraordinary adventures. He died on May 19 after suffering a heart attack. He was 55.

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